In Shakespeare's day the groundlings were a lot more unruly, and you could say that that actress wasn't being sincere or true to her Shakespearean traditions, taking umbrage at a harmless bit of tom foolery that wouldn't have caused Richard Burbage to drop so much as a single iamb from To be, or not to be.

For the next seven years, despite repeated strokes, my grandfather worked at a small desk, piecing together the legendary fragments into a larger mosaic, adding a stanza here, a coda there, soldering an anapest or an iamb.